NFL Rivals, an officially licensed mobile football game from Mythical Games, announced Friday that its second in-game season will launch on September 5 alongside the real-world season kickoff of the National Football League (NFL).

Mythical Games said that the mobile game attracted over 5 million downloads and more than 115 million games played in its first season. Its second season, called “Year 2,” will introduce new game modes, “distinctive” pack drops, and new ways for fans to engage with the sport.

Earlier this week, Mythical also announced that it has inked a deal with the current Super Bowl champions, the Kansas City Chiefs, which named NFL Rivals the team’s official mobile game. The alliance includes branding opportunities for the game within the team’s Arrowhead Stadium, along with other collaborations.

“We have a slate of activations, in and out of the game, to deepen our player engagement with the NFL Rivals brand and football season.” John Linden, CEO of Mythical Games, told Decrypt, “We want the player community to be integral to this game, meaning more engagement and interaction with our awesome players.”

The iOS and Android football game sees players act as team general managers (GMs), make plays, and try to win games against the league’s teams. While it acts like a traditional free-to-play game at core, NFL Rivals is built around optional NFT player cards, with the studio adding an in-game marketplace last August to streamline the process of trading the digital collectibles.

The addition of an NFT marketplace within took the game to a new level, Linden believes, adding “another dimension” to NFL Rivals not possible otherwise. He believes that the introduction of a new player-vs-player (PvP) mode is slated to have a similar effect on the future of the mobile game.

“The upcoming and highly anticipated PvP mode should be the biggest upgrade to NFL Rivals since the marketplace went live, and it’s the one we know our players are most excited about,” Linden added.

The Mythical CEO said that about 20% of players “have upgraded their game-supplied wallet to a proper Web3 wallet” to interact with NFTs, which are minted on the Mythos Chain built on Polkadot. Daily transactions on the secondary marketplace have jumped from a few hundred a day last year to over 8,000 per day ahead of the Year 2 launch, he added.

“All of which points to a very bright future for NFL Rivals and Web3 gaming at large,” Linden said.

Edited by Andrew Hayward